PRESS RELEASE
The international conference »Russia and Europe«
LJUBLJANA, 28 October 2014 - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the magazine "International affairs journal" organized an international conference entitled "Russia and Europe: Topical Issues of Contemporary International Journalism - Global Challenges in the mirror of mass media", held on 28 October 2014 in Vienna.
The purpose of the conference was to highlight the current media situation in Europe and in the Russian Federation, and the degree of cooperation between European and Russian media. A lot of attention was focused on the most topical international issues covered by the media in the previous year.
The conference was opened by Armen Oganesyan, editor of the magazine "International affairs journal" and Gennady Gatilov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Participants at the conference, among others, also included Thomas Seifert, deputy editor of the "Wiener Zeitung", Austria, Tiberio Graziani, chief editor of the international journal "Geopolitica" Gennady Shmal, president of the Association of Oil & Gas producers of Russia, George Protopapas, researcher and media analyst at research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS), Yaroslav Skvortsov, dean of the school of international journalism at Moscow State Institute of International Relations and a number of other participants.
Bostjan Ploštajner, a consultant at the International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) participated in the panel "Country as a whole: Objectivity of mass media", in which he presented a paper entitled "Independence of media in Slovenia". In the paper he emphasized the importance of independent media and journalists. He highlighted the impact of media ownership on their performance and analyzed the causes and consequences of the ownership structure of Slovenian print media.
Ljubljana, October 28, 2014
